The Unger Kitchen Reno

Saturday, June 2, 2012

In case you're wondering 'what happened to week 4?' well, I have no clue. Dave and I spent time trying to remember what we did the weekend after the contractors came... somewhere in there we cleaned the driveway and gutters but it's hard to imagine we weren't working on the house! But alas... during the last weekend of May/first of June, we had gone from our house looking as if Home Depot had thrown up in it to it looking like a room (albeit not quite a kitchen or dining room, yet)

Best tool ever! Drywall Jack from Home Depot: $40/day (?)... Not having to lift drywall by hand: $ Priceless.

First sheet of drywall. Dave is good at screwin.

Drywall screwdrivers make life so wonderful.

Hard to see through all the dust, but that there's a ROOM!

Corner bracing around the pass-through

Andrea taping

Sweet can lights, dude!

Mudded!

Reesie still doesn't get what's going on.

WOOHOO!

And we have our countertop! (prototype)

There ya have it, folks! We are almost ready to paint (a bit more sanding/spackling, of course!) and then floors and cabinets are good to go. HOW EXCITING?!!!!

I know this was a few weeks ago but here's the quick update from Mid-May...

The contractors (electrician and plumber) did their first rounds of work on the kit/DR combo...

Electrical included 9 can lights, a new living room light, chandelier, 2 pendant lights, and moving the outlets all around (oh yeah... and having to completely switch out the electrical panel! but that's slightly unrelated)

The plumber moved the sink lines down and rotated them and moved the water line for the fridge and gas line for the stove.

The dumpster came the following day and check out how full it is!

Sink fittings rotated to other side of wall

Drain line ran through bulkhead; it had to be re-run so that it could go behind the drywall.

New plumbing! (and new mess)

At first we thought this might be a bit too big... turns out we picked the perfect size!

Not many pictures of plumbing rough-ins but here's one of our can lights. (and a new water line)

Monday, May 14, 2012

This was our last weekend with the dumpster so we made the most of it by finishing the demo, and even started to put stuff back together! (sorta). Andrea took Monday and Tuesday off of work to make sure that everything is ready for the contractors on Wednesday... [It's Monday night now, so my tenses are all sorts of crazy... I did take it off, the contractors will be coming. Just wanted to clarify.] Any remaining junk that has to go will need to be done by David on Thursday and then they're coming for the dumpster on Friday. Anyway, that's the plan.

But you can skip to next week's post and have a more accurate idea of the plan (since it will have already happened!). Let's look back at this weekend!

We went into the week with a kitchen, albeit non very functional. We had all of our appliances and our base cabinets. Dishes and food were stored in odd-ball locations. Then on Friday, I cleared out the rest of the cabinets.

It's hard to see much in this picture, but the dishwasher and sink are still connected, and the stove (left) still functions. At this point, the coffee maker has been brought to the upstairs bathroom because there is nowhere to keep coffee and sugar.

The first to go were the sink and dishwasher. The sink wasn't in a real "sink base" but instead was floating, supported by the counter tops which were supported by these flimsy furring strips. Waste of space and totally nasty.

Once we got the sink and DW out, we could remove the subfloors which were covered in cement board. Nice view into the basement... good thing Dave isn't afraid of heights! (Turns out I am... mildly)

Once replaced the subfloors from the 2/3 of the kitchen near the window, we were ready to move the fridge and stove. We unplugged and unattached everything and slid them to the opposite side of the room, exposing the last bit of hooooorrrrible flooring and some more cement board. There also was a magnetic "F" probably from about the mid 90s when they put in the fridge. I think it's a sign (for "friggin awesome new kitchen comin' our way!)

Dave had to plane down a high joist, while I worked on fixing some shoddy duct work. Found an awesome new use for duck tape!!!

Oh... it's called duct tape? You mean it was actually meant for this? Weird.

Once the floors were down we removed the two walls, exposing what will soon be a big open room! WOOHOO!

Heeeeere's Johnny!

I spent a good chunk of time making a couple of temporary support walls to hold up the joists for the second floor. The three studs in this picture will be gone soon! So it only makes sense that I have the honor of being the first to poke my head through this wall.

Finally! Our goal this weekend (including Monday) was to finish the pass through. The only part left is to add two studs under the cross beam. On either side of the header are studs and jack studs to fully support the weight of the three joists that run perpendicular to the top. We recycled a 2x4 from the wall to integrate it into the header because of how much more solid the old wood is compared to the new.

Now when you enter the front door you can see all the way to the back of the house. This should let in sooo much light! The passthrough will get a nice thick frame to complement the one on the front window, and some granite on the base to incorporate it into the kitchen nicely. She looks great, doesn't she?

We got our cabinets earlier this week and picked up our flooring from Lancaster today. Since we needed to rent a truck anyway, we also went ahead and picked up our drywall (22 pieces!) and the rest of the plywood for the floors, plus a miter saw (YAY!) and the underlayment. We rocked the 10% off coupon at Home Depot but still hit about 7% of our budget--just on building materials! Ouch. We are 70% to our max budget and haven't gotten our countertops.

Our cabinets, minus the few that we put into the new kitchen to see how she looks. Dave lost his Camara spot :)

New flooring - 22 boxes, with some pieces laid out to see how it looks.

The garage! See all of our plywood and 22 sheets of drywall?!

I've always wanted one. Shhhh - don't tell Dave. I convinced him it was a necessity.

Once we got the cabinets, we opened up the pantry and started to clear out the dishes. See how empty these are?

Just to talley - a total of about 7 cabinets mostly emptied, with the exception of frequently used stuff.

And it all fits into our 18" pantry!!!! WOO HOO! Let the fun times begin.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Over the weekend (April 6-9) we removed all of the tile (the green is gone!) and then removed the subfloor beneath it in some parts. We're not done, but here's our progress!

Our kitchen... horrible floors, yeah?

We looked for this wallpaper at home improvement stores but couldn't find anything to match. I guess that striped look is out? Who knew.

Our closet; the first to get tiles removed

Dave reading directions to the jackhammer

The beast. 20 lb jackhammer from Home Depot.

First ripping stuff up.

Moving down the hall. Gosh that tile was a beast.

We're going to need a dumpster soon! And that's not even half of the pile. Check in to the next blog page to see the old subfloors out and the new subfloors in! (See, I'm a great blogger because I keep y'all on the edge of your seats and wanting more)

UPDATE: 4/28/12
Here are the rest of the photos from that weekend. The subfloors in the halls are all cut and in place, but need to be nailed and glued still, which should get done as soon as we are done with the dumpsters and the kitchen cabinets have been cleared out.

That's the garage door (closest) and basement door (further away) and looking into the kitchen.